Prison memoirs of An Anarchist by BERKMAN, Alexander

BERKMAN, Alexander

Prison memoirs of An Anarchist

Edition: First Edition

New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association: 1912. Original olive green cloth. frontis portrait of Berkman"At the time of the Homestead Strike." Gift inscription from Berman to C.V. Cook to the front end paper. In ink, states that this was part of Home Library at Home Hall. This is Berkman's account of his experience in prison in Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh, from 1892 to 1906. The book begins with the details of how Berkman came to be imprisoned: as an anarchist activist, he had attempted to assassinate wealthy industrialist Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Carnegie steel works in Pennsylvania. Berkman - Russian born, anarchist and lover of Emma Goldman, in 1919 he was finally deported to the Soviet Union where he would also be eventually expelled.<br />Cook, Cassius V., 1879-1950 - American anarchist, worked in Chicago as treasurer of the Rationalist Association of North America in 1915 and publisher of the Libertarian Magazine. In 1917-1918 he was secretary-treasurer of Daniel Wallace's League of Humanity. He spoke at an Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman Protest Defense Meeting, held under the auspices of the League of Humanity on 23 June 1917 with Daniel H. Wallace, William Nathanson, and William Abrams. Cook was arrested on 28 March 1918 and charged with violation of the Espionage act, but was able to escape a prison term "due to the extraordinary cautiousness of my good friend Attorney Harold O. Mulks of Chicago." (Cook to Agnes Inglis 26, March 1943, Cassius Cook Papers, Labadie Collection, University of Michigan), Lucy Parsons put up her house in Chicago to help bail out Cook in 1918 and he was released about a month after his arrest. In April 1918 Mother Earth Bulletin reported that he was arrested and placed under $10,000 bail, charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft, and a C.V. Cook Defense Committee was organized in Chicago. After his release from Cook County Jail he became publicity director for the Tom Mooney case in Chicago, and was then appointed by the President of the Chicago Federation of Labor to a Committee of Fifteen to help build a chain of cooperative retail stores and a national cooperative Wholesale shop, a venture which eventually failed.

Condition: The cloth is somewhat faded and has a little staining. Chipping to the top edge of the spine - but has been sympathetically repaired. Darkening to the pages, and the ink of the gift inscription is somewhat faded, but still legible. Some handling, and obviously read, but still very presentable.